Kudos to marlinguy for letting us know a while back about the great clearance sale @ Nosler for 9.3X74R brass to use for making 40-90 brass for the old Ballards.  I finally got the *@#* combination sorted out so I could open my gun safe, and now I have access once again to my good old Ballard Pacific.  From flea-Bay I got a #13 priming chamber for my 310 tool, and a while back friend Dale53 had a clearance sale on his unused GOEX BP.  I'm figuring I now have everything I need to fire form some brass and start shooting this bad boy I won at auction back in 2004! 

My plan is to prime the cases with standard WLR primers and add some amount of BP, then fill the case the rest of the way with either corn meal or cream of wheat, capping it all off with a single wadded up sheet of toilet paper.  My question is to those who have used BP for fire forming large cases is, "How much BP should I use?"  With this old Ballard that I have never shot, I have absolutely NO plans to use any kind of smokeless in it until I have gotten properly formed brass and can start developing very mild loads. 

By way of explanation, this Pacific is a put-together gun from the estate auction of an old gunsmith friend from the mountains of VA.  The barrel and fore end have matching numbers, then everything else with numbers has a second matching set of numbers.  The bore is not primo by any stretch but I think it will polish out to be a decent shooter.  I currently own 3 Darr bullet moulds in 40 cal, so I'm hoping I can either make a light bullet Express load for it, or go the other way and make some ground stomping heavy bullet buffalo loads... likely with BP at least to start with. 

As always, TIA for any and all help and information you may provide.  Now if the Spring Floods would just recede!  Does anybody have a dove I can send out to look for dry land?? 

Regards,
Froggie

i went this route too in the beginning with the 9.3 brass for my Ballard Pacific. once fired i knew they where not really a good fit in my chamber, plus the rim is smaller. my chamber cast confirmed it as the everlasting paper patch chamber. so i had to order a few from Rocky mountain cartridge and now do not have the bulge at the case head and perfect extraction. bore on my rifle is about a 7 or 8.
best
kw

Thanks for that, KW.  The one "original" round of ammo I have been able to acquire is paper patched and marked on the case head UMC, SM and 40-85.  It is a very comfortable fit in my chamber, about what I would expect from a modern chamber and cartridge.   
The adventure continues! 

Froggie

.40-85 Everlasting, and .40-90 Ballard have the same exterior dimensions, I'm unsure why your gun would have a larger chamber? The difference is internal case capacity, not external dimensions. So thicker walls internally , not externally.

Cartridges of the World lists 40-85/90 Ballard Everlasting base .477, rim .545 thickness of .078.
9.3x74r  has a listed base .465, rim .524, thickness of .052.
I've read someplace to rap tape at the base of the brass for fire forming the first time to center the brass in the chamber,  not needed after the first firing. 
I don't have a rifle chambered in 40-85 /90 Ballard Everlasting but chose to build a rolling block in 9.3x74r  on a #5 action after research to make sure I wasn't getting into pressure problems. 
The other chambering considered was the 35 Winchester .457/.539/.048. The lack of dies and reamer other than custom  made my choice. 

WW

Range Report: I finally had time on a clear, dry day to get out to the club range and try to fire form a few of my new 9.3 X 74R cases out to 40-90 Ballard. I only did a few rounds (ultimately 6) with both good news and bad news to report.

First the good news; with 4.3 cc (my largest Lee dipper) of GOEX FFFg powder then the rest of the volume filled with Cream of Wheat and capped with a small square of toilet paper, the first 5 cases blew out to full chamber dimension except for a little wasp waist back about where the powder and CoW met. To see whether the "problem" was a function of a partially filled case, I went back and loaded a 6th case to the neck, leaving just enough room to cram in the little wad of TP, and fired that round. I cannot pick that round out from the other 5! 

The bad news? As KFW brought out, the rim on the 9.3 X 74R is a few thousandths smaller in diameter than the original Ballard round, and although virgin brass picks up and extracts easily, the Ballard extractor skips right over the rim of a fired round and it doesn't move. Good thing the Ballard comes with a wiping rod that can be used as a manual extractor! 

The project continues... I may have to get an extractor from a smaller caliber and fit it to my Ballard to overcome the extraction problem... I really hate to alter my original extractor (by bending, building up with weld, etc.) 

Stay tuned!
Froggie

Thanks for the report Green Frog.  I have some more .38-50 Remington Hepburn cases to form and based on your results it'll probably work pretty well with BP.

Chris.

Thanks Bruce